


cat’s eye

by rowdyhomo



Category: Naruto
Genre: Canon Compliant, Gen, a brief mention of burnt corpses but not graphic, there is minor character death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-23
Updated: 2018-02-23
Packaged: 2019-03-22 20:43:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,305
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13772178
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rowdyhomo/pseuds/rowdyhomo
Summary: when touka is five, she decides hate is enough to live for.





	cat’s eye

Touka’s memories of her mother are fleeting at best or blurry, foggy, nonsensical collections of sights and sounds at worst.

She remembers dogging her mother’s steps, copying her every move on silent feet. Or, at least as silent as a four-year-old, even a trained one such as her, can be. She remembers how her mother would catch her, gather her up in her arms and coo over her little cat-foot. She remembers spicy curry, spicy soups, spicy everything. Vaguely, she can call up a figment of the woman’s face, a sort of sharp beauty—she’s certain she must have her mother’s chin.

There’s half a dozen scattered memories in between. The sort that only live through muscle memory as she performs tea ceremony or pivots to throw an uppercut. She knows her mother taught her this. Knows her mother taught her all the ways to be a lady as well as every way to be a shinobi. The elder generation may despair of her, Touka  _had_  been raised a lady. She  _knows_  this. For all she can’t remember the learning, she has the knowledge there. Written into her bones by a steady hand and husky voice Touka only catches in wisps at the end of dreams where she is pierced by a golden eyed stare.

She doesn’t remember her mother’s death, hadn’t been there to witness it, nor does she remember staring down at the charred thing that had once been a woman and identifying it. Though, when her dreams turn to nightmares she swears she almost sees it. A human made shadow by fire and even if she can’t actually see, the scent of burnt flesh filling her lungs is more than telling.

Touka wishes more than anything she could forget.

She never does.

Instead, she throws herself into hatred.

She’s only five, she doesn’t have anyone—she hisses and refuses anyone who draws near to her home and tries to take the place of Mama—or anything else. Nothing but the drive to hurt and tear and _rend_ those who took and took and _took_ so much from her before she could even  _remember_  what she’s lost.  Such as father and a brother, nameless ghosts who wander the empty spaces of her home that her mother never quite managed to fill. Such as her world, in the form of her mother.

It won’t fill the hole in her, this hate. Not even close. Two losses don’t add up to a gain, after all, but she’ll _feel_ better. Or, so the sharp-eyed brunette thinks, in all her five-year-old wisdom.

So, Touka trains.

She trains until her fists bleed, until her body aches and shakes, and trains some more.

When she deigns to take part in the clan’s open lessons for children, she refuses loss and defeat. She gets up again. And again. And again. If for nothing else but to hear the soft whisper crooning ‘ _oh, little cat-foot, don’t you ever stay down.’_  A voice reaching beyond the grave to push her on. She leaves bloodied and bruised and with broken bones on occasion, but she leaves  _triumphant_.

That’s all that matters. The triumph. Succeeding. If she wins she can’t think of anything else but half-forgotten lullabies.

By the time she is eight, the rest of the Senju Clan side-eye her. Side-step her. There’s wariness and caution in their eyes, uneasiness in their words. Touka keeps her head held high. Let them call her mad, she will pay her dues regardless. Besides, as long as another Uchiha ends up dead in the ground, why should they care about the state of mind of who does it, so long as it _is_ done?

When Touka is eight, she’s brought out onto the field for the first time.

It’s the second worst memory of her short life. Fighting, bleeding, and struggling, losing, losing _, losing_ and choking on despair. Her dogged determination and her silent-swift steps are not enough.

She almost dies under the sword of an Uchiha.

The splitting of flesh, the pain, the absolute hopelessness and sickness at her weakness permeates everything until—she wakes.

Touka stares up at the wood ceiling for entirely too long. The blankets draped across her are comfortingly heavy. But, this isn’t her home, she realizes, before dragging her throbbing skull to the side to look at the person next to her.

Kneeling beside her is a woman. Not a healer, but Lady Senju herself.

The fact that Touka is clearly missing some memory, the moment between being struck down and waking here, hardly stops the bafflement flowing through her.

Lady Hikari is nursing her newborn, her second son, humming a tune that strikes familiar within Touka. Hikari’s sharp eyes, golden like the pair that haunts Touka’s dreams, snap to her when Touka moves. The tune abruptly cuts off in a small ‘oh’ of surprise.

“You’re awake,” says Hikari, with a note of soft relief Touka hasn’t heard in years.

Touka blinks.

“Ah, are you feeling, alright? I can grab the healer, Kimiko only stepped out for a moment,” adds the woman.

Touka blinks again. The scene doesn’t change. Lady Senju, with the nearly newly born Tobirama, is still staring down at her. There’s concern in her eyes reserved entirely for Touka even as she gently rocks and continues to feed the baby in her arms.

Somehow, Touka unsticks her tongue from her mouth and says, “Sore.”

“Any stabbing pains?” questions Hikari.

Touka shakes her head.

A sigh, and it should be reproachful, just like everyone else in this Clan, but it’s _relieved_.

“You had a fairly mild injury, but you lost quite a bit of blood,” explains Hikari as if that explains anything at all.

In a stupor caught between drug-induced and bewildered, Touka continues to stare. Her mahogany brown eyes are locked onto Hikari’s no matter where the elder looks. Touka never really noticed how reflective they were, or the color. She’s only seen the Lady Senju in passing when she came to pick up her eldest, Hashirama, from the clan lessons.

For some reason, her eyes are unbearably familiar.

It is only after Tobirama finally unlatches and Hikari rights her clothing that the woman returns her gaze. A smile that can only be self-depreciating pulls at the corners of Hikari’s lips.

Sighing, the woman shifts Tobirama, the red-eyed babe babbling nonsensically, to one arm. After stern instructions, she helps Touka get some much-needed water down her throat. It’s only after Touka settles back both wearily and warily onto the futon that Hikari speaks again.

“I suppose...you wish to know why I am here,” begins Hikari, brushing the hair from Touka’s sweaty forehead.

Touka wants to cringe away and push back against the contact all at once.

With no reply forthcoming from Touka, Hikari draws back. Tobirama rests in both her arms once more as she stares off into the distance.

After a long moment, Hikari says, “Your mother and I were sisters.”

Touka wonders if the world has upended or if it’s just her. She doesn’t reply, can’t even try though her throat is no longer dry. The words stick and catch like thorns in her throat because surely this must be a dream. A fever dream brought on by her injury because she has no one. No family, even if all the Senju are indirectly related to her. Related does not mean _family_.

Touka’s stare becomes more desperate.

“We were close, once,” murmurs Hikari. “We...I do not even remember what it was. There was a fight and it turned into a grudge and one day I looked for her at my side as she always was, and she was not there. I cannot even remember how or why I lost her, but I did and then...by the time I summoned the courage to fix it she was gone.”

The woman looks down at her, golden gaze piercing. Hikari’s eyes glitter like cat’s eyes, like the gaze in Touka’s memories of Momma.

“I was assured you were being well cared for,” Hikari adds. There’s a hard glint to her golden eyes. “Apparently, I was misinformed.”

That Touka bristles at. She grasps at that spark of anger and doesn’t let go.

It’s better than feeling confused.

Hopeful.

“Ah take care of myself fine!” Touka spits, indignation and fear in equal measure. After a moment, because she  _was_  raised a lady, too, the girl adds in spiteful deference. “Lady Senju.”

Said Lady Senju opens her mouth and laughs. It startles Touka’s anger to stillness. A smile containing more no more mirth than a sob curls over Hikari’s mouth.

Tobirama, oblivious, gurgles on.

“Perhaps,” the woman allows after a moment.  “But, after today, you will be living with me.”

“Ah don’ need no one else,” Touka protests. That spark of anger in her raises its head, though really Touka can’t feel much more than bewildered. Her words carry half as much bite as they should as she levers herself up through ache in her abdomen. “’M fine, Ah can beat everyone wih my bare fists!”

Such a statement isn’t necessarily untrue. Anyone over sixteen no longer attends the clan wide teaching sessions for children, but everyone under sixteen Touka has beaten more than once by tooth and nail alone.

“And nothing else,” Hikari murmurs, sounding both terribly proud and horribly sad.

It digs at Touka, who’s rapidly deciding, blood or not, she’s gonna give the Lady Senju a what-for for looking down on her. Before Touka winds herself up, Hikari speaks again.

“Would you not like to learn how to wield the naginata as your mother did? She was a weapons mistress, once. Or perhaps your mother’s genjustus that once made our Clan famous? There is a reason Yuuhi Katsumi was called the Cat’s Eye,” says Hikari. Her tone is even and her stare bores levelly into Touka’s soul, unrelenting. A small peek at the formidable woman Yuuhi-nee-Senju Hikari could be.

Touka, for her part, sucks in a breath and chokes on air.

She’s only eight. She doesn’t know if what Lady Senju says is on purpose. But every word is a drop of rain to the desert that is Touka’s aching heart, bereft of her mother, her entire world. Hikari’s words, intentional or not, offer a piece to fill the void that scrapes within Touka like broken glass.

No one in the Clan has ever spoken of her mother. The dead are dead and stay buried, even in memory. It’s the only way to survive in times like these where people die everywhere you look.

But Lady Senju offers words and memories, second-hand, of a woman Touka loved like nothing else since but barely knew.

Touka doesn’t think she could resist even if she wanted to.

Still, she is a shinobi’s daughter. The young girl looks Hikari up and down. Even goes as far as to turn her head away from the woman, eyeing her from the corner of her eye.

“What an’ yer gonna teach me that?” Touka asks, with all the suspicion it deserves. She barely remembers to tack on Hikari’s name and title.

Lady Hikari smiles mirthlessly.

“Well,” says the woman, her grin turning feral. “I should hope that I know enough to teach considering my dear Katsumi honed all her skills on me...and while the naginata was never my favorite I am quite proficient. As for genjutsu, you will be hard pressed to find anyone as skilled as me within the Senju.”

There’s really nothing Touka can say to that. Especially not in denial. Not when every atom of her  _yearns_  to feel her mother within her. Feel her closer than lessons that only exist on instinct. Closer still than the soft whispers that make opening her eyes before she needs to wake, when she cannot easily fall back asleep, worth it.

“Ah guess,” Touka says finally. “Ah’ll live wih ya. But only if ya teach me.”

Hikari, the Lady Senju herself, inclines her head to her and Touka must fight a wave of dizziness that has nothing to do with her injury.

Something warm, something that looks and feels like home, trickles into the curve of Hikari’s mouth as she says, “Of course, I would expect nothing less.”

Abruptly, the woman stands. Touka flails as she reaches out, suddenly afraid Hikari would leave her when she only just got to have her. Hikari smiles gently at her, understanding, then arranges Tobirama in Touka’s arms. Touka blinks. Begins to protest that she’s injured and can’t possibly hold a little baby properly when Hikari deftly adds supporting pillows behind her and below her arms. In then end, Touka is holding Tobirama without putting any muscle effort into it.

“Please, take care of him,” says Hikari, fondly kissing first the babe’s brow then, miraculously, Touka’s as well. “I will return in a couple hours at most. I have some…things…to sort out.”

Rising like the regal typhoon she is, Hikari strides from the room, her long silver hair flowing behind her. The door to the room slides gently shut.

Touka stares at the door for several long moments before finally directing her gaze downwards.

Tobirama, a grand three months old, looks up at her and burbles.

Snorting, Touka can’t fight the grin stretching across her face. She holds a finger within reach and, expectedly, Tobirama latches onto it with all the determination his infant body can muster.

“So…,” says Touka, wiggling her finger and watching with fascination as Tobirama refuses to let go. “Ah guess we’re family, huh?”

The silver-haired babe makes an incomprehensible noise.

“Mm, so this’s late but…welcome t’the world, cuz,” finishes Touka as the baby wisely pulls her index finger into his mouth.

Touka laughs like she hasn’t in longer than she can remember.

It’s a good feeling.

**Author's Note:**

> cat eyes are very reflective, which may or may not fit as a nickname for a genjutsu specialist since genjutsus sort of reflect the target's mind, but twisted. like a fun house mirror.
> 
> also before anyone comes at me saying yuuhi can only be red-eyed, i say, says who? canon? no, canon says nothing.


End file.
